A weekly cycle of catering to my culinary curiosity

Eggplant Parmigiana and Zucchini a Scapece

Of all the vegetables that like being fried in olive oil, none rewards that treatment more than eggplant and zucchini do. While both are perfectly tasty when served with no more elaboration than that, both also offer lots of scope for further excellent flavor combinations. I made two of my favorites this past week.

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Eggplant parmigiana, as it’s most often done in the USA, involves dipping the eggplant slices in beaten egg – sometimes a slurry of egg and grated cheese – and coating them in breadcrumbs before frying. I’ve often done it that way myself, and it’s very good. Some recipes call for oven-roasting the eggplant instead of frying it. That I never do. Forget calories: To my mind the olive oil is an essential ingredient, and a healthy one at that.

Lately I’ve been enjoying the Neapolitan style of parmigiana di melanzane, a simpler version of the dish, ubiquitous on menus all through Campania. It’s a pretty standard preparation, much the same in any good Neapolitan cookbook. I generally make it in a quantity to serve two for a main course.

I peel a one-pound eggplant, slice it ¼ inch thick, and soak the slices in salted water for 30 minutes. This achieves the same purpose as salting the slices, which is drawing out the eggplant’s bitterness.

In summer, the eggplant soaking time is long enough to make about a cup of sauce, with peeled and chopped fresh San Marzano tomatoes, salt, and olive oil. Maybe a little minced onion, if I feel like it. Other seasons, when fresh tomatoes are unavailable, I’ll use my home-jarred sauce or good Italian canned tomatoes, cooking the sauce down until it’s quite thick.

After the eggplant slices are drained and pressed as dry as possible, I fry them in about ½ inch of olive oil, until they’re just tender and lightly golden. Sometimes I dust them with flour first; sometimes not. Thin as they are, the frying takes only about two minutes to a side.

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Then comes the assembly: a film of sauce on the bottom of a baking dish, then layers of eggplant, sauce, chopped-up mozzarella (about 6 ounces in all), grated parmigiano (about 6 tablespoons in all), and chopped basil; ending with eggplant, sauce, and parmigiano. I pick a size dish that will give me three layers.

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It goes into a 350° oven, uncovered, for about 20 minutes, until the juices are bubbling merrily. You can eat eggplant parmigiana hot if you can’t wait, but it gets better if you let it cool down somewhat, and it isn’t bad at all warmed up the next day. A very useful vegetable creation.

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Zucchini a scapece is also a Neapolitan specialty. I made it a few days after the eggplant because I had all that barely used frying oil available, and one of the stands in my greenmarket had the costata romanesco variety of zucchini.

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These pale green, ridged squashes are sweeter and nuttier than the ordinary dark green zucchini. Often lumpy looking, they seem to be even more lusty growers, so it’s hard to get small ones, which I much prefer, but even when fairly large they have good firm flesh and not overly developed seeds.

The scapece treatment (like escabeche) is a marinade for foods that have been fried. In the magisterial La Cucina Napoletana, author J. Caròla Francesconi calls zucchini done this way sommamente appetitosi e ghiotti – that is, supremely appetizing and delicious. I used her recipe as a guide for my own in The Seasons of the Italian Kitchen.

I salt ½-inch rounds of zucchini and let them sit in a colander for an hour, then rinse, drain and dry them, pressing pretty hard to remove as much moisture as possible. I fry them until golden in ½ inch of olive oil, draining again on paper towels.

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Then they go into a broad bowl and are tossed with chopped mint and freshly ground black pepper. In a small pot I simmer wine vinegar, water, and a halved garlic clove for five minutes, pour that over the zucchini and toss them again. Finally I add a few tablespoons of the zucchini frying oil and toss once more.

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Now comes the hard part: You mustn’t eat them right away, no matter how appetitosi and ghiotti they look. They need to sit at cool room temperature for a whole day, to let the flavors develop. Then they are wonderful, whether in a mixed antipasto, as a dinner side dish, or even (though it’s not very Italian) as dressing on a sandwich.